Article:

This paper discusses the potential of emerging digital fabrication techniques toproduce material-efficient thin folded concrete structures. Although in the 50sand 60s folded structures provided a common optimal solution for spanning largedistances without additional vertical supports, today, the number of these projectsdecreased significantly due to their complicated formworks and labour-intensiverealization. Digital fabrication methods for concrete hold the promise toefficiently produce intricate folded mass-customized shapes with enhancedload-bearing capacity. This paper focuses on a robotic slip-forming process,Smart Dynamic Casting (SDC), to produce various thin-walled folded concreteelements with the same formwork providing smooth surface finish and gradualvariations along the height. An empirical research methodology was applied toevaluate the fabrication feasibility of digitally designed thin folded geometrieswith one-to-one scale prototypes. Despite the discovered design limitations due tofabrication and material constraints, the exploration led to a new promisingresearch direction, termed `Digital Casting'.